Trump Critics Urge the International Criminal Court To Pursue the President After America Sanctions Four of the Trial Venue’s Judges

A day after America imposed new sanctions on four International Criminal Court officials, global condemnations arrived hard and fast Friday. Will the Hague-based venue now go after President Trump and Secretary Rubio?“Today, I am designating Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler of Slovenia” for sanctions, Mr. Rubio announced Thursday. The four judges, he added, “have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel.”Ms. Bossa and Ms. Ibanez-Carranza authorized an ICC investigation into American personnel in Afghanistan, the Department of State notes. Ms. Alapini Gansou and Ms. Hohler issued arrest warrants targeting Prime Minister Netanyahu and a former Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant. American assets of the four judges will be confiscated and they will be banned from doing business with Americans or having access to dollar-based transactions. America and Israel contend that the ICC has no jurisdiction over their officials, as neither country is a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the court. In Israel’s case, the court “did an end run” around its own rules, the executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, tells the Sun. To prosecute Israelis, he says, the ICC turned Palestine into a signatory, even though it “does not meet the basic elements of statehood.” The court’s top prosecutor, Karim Khan, who was sanctioned by Washington in February, called for the arrest of Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant over crimes allegedly committed in Gaza. The two newly sanctioned ICC judges authorized the warrants even though Mr. Khan called for the arrests at the same time an underling made an official sexual-assault complaint against him. The complaint is being investigated. Regardless, champions of the Hague are furious at Washington. Europe “fully supports the ICC and its officials,” the European Union Commission’s chief, Ursula von der Leyen, writes on X. As the ICC’s host country, the Netherlands foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, adds, “we remain fully committed to ensuring the Court can function as unhindered as possible.”“Attacks against judges for performance of their judicial functions run directly counter to respect for the rule of law and the equal protection of the law — values for which the U.S. has long stood,” the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, says. A former Human Rights Watch chief, Kenneth Roth, claims that Messrs. Rubio and Trump could now be tried by the ICC for sanctioning its judges. The measures, he writes on X, are “invitations for ICC charges for Trump and Marco Rubio of obstructing justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute.”According to that article, the ICC could have jurisdiction over offenses “committed intentionally,” including “impeding, intimidating, or corruptly influencing an official of the Court for the purpose of forcing or persuading the official not to perform, or to perform improperly, his or her duties.” Do ICC officials, then, have complete immunity? “Any power can be corrupted, and the power of prosecution is very significant,” Mr. Neuer says. “That’s why in any proper democratic government, it is not absolute.” As for the Rome Statute, he adds, “it’s obviously meaningless to invoke it against a country that is in no way legally obliged to those provisions.”Since 1998, when the statute that established the ICC was conceived as a treaty, no American presidents have attempted to ratify it. Nor did top world powers such as Communist China, Russia, and India. Israel and most Arab countries also declined to join the court that now has 125 member states.According to the statute’s article 13b, the ICC can investigate or prosecute citizens of non-member states if their cases are “referred to the Prosecutor by the Security Council.” America can veto any such referral. Yet, the ICC used the fact that a failed state, Afghanistan, is a member to launch an investigation against Americans who fought Al Qaeda and the Taliban, UN-proscribed terror organizations. “The ICC was warned that investigating Americans or our allies would lead to consequences and sanctions,” Senator Cotton writes on X. “Glad to see President Trump take action against this farce of a court.”In a statement, Mr. Netanyahu thanked America for “imposing sanctions against the politicized judges of the ICC,” adding that Messrs. Trump and Rubio “justly stood up for the right of Israel, the United States, and all democracies to defend themselves against savage terror.”As European, UN, and other critics pile on, Mr. Trump seems eager to cut the ICC judges down to size and deter them from expanding the court’s jurisdiction. “No one else is holding them to account,” Mr. Neuer says.

Trump Critics Urge the International Criminal Court To Pursue the President After America Sanctions Four of the Trial Venue’s Judges

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